Even though there has been a lot of progress when it comes to gaming laptops, they still tend to cost a lot of money, especially if you’re on a tight budget and don’t want to spend the thousands of dollars they usually cost. Luckily, HP has a great solution for you in the form of the HP Victus 15, which has a couple of solid low-budget configurations. For example, this configuration from Best Buy will let you net the Victus 15 for just $550, rather than the usual $880 it goes for, saving you a solid $330 in the process.
It’s worth noting from the start that this configuration of the HP Victus 15 is not that powerful, as it comes with an older RTX 3050 GPU under the hood. That’s an entry-level GPU from the last generation, although that doesn’t necessarily make it a bad choice, especially if you’re mostly interested in free-to-play games like CS:GO and League of Legends. In fact, the 15.6-inch FHD screen can even hit a 144Hz refresh rate, which implies that it’s made for these types of games that are older and well-optimized for budget GPUs so that you can play them a bit more competitively. That said, the screen can only hit 250 nits of peak brightness, so you’ll want to keep it away from any sunlight or strong lighting when gaming.
Interestingly, you get a pretty solid Intel Core i5 12450H, which is a mid-range processor you might not expect to find at this price point, and it’s great for gaming and other productivity tasks. When it comes to RAM, you get 8GBs of DDR4, which is good for this price but a bit mediocre for a gaming laptop, and the same goes for the 512GB SSD. Luckily, you can upgrade both with one of these RAM deals and SSD deals, so it’s not a dealbreaker.
Overall, the HP Victus 15 is an excellent entry-level gaming laptop, and the deal from Best Buy that brings it down to just $550 makes it a steal. Of course, if you want something that’s a bit more powerful, you may want to check out some of these other great gaming laptop deals instead.
Speech-to-text apps have flooded the App Store, making it easier than ever to type on our Macs with just our voice. I have previously covered one such app called TypeWhisper. However, there has been a dearth of good text-to-speech models, and most of the good ones are locked behind a subscription.
Ollama, an open-source app that lets you run local AI models on your computer, wants to change that. It works on macOS, Windows, and Linux, and your prompts are never stored or used for training.
Did you think hitting delete on your AI chatbot conversation actually makes it disappear? Georgia Tech researchers just proved that's not entirely true. They have built a forensic tool called ORISA that can dig deleted conversations from your phone and even rebuild them into a working chatbot session you can keep talking to.
How can ORISA bring deleted AI conversations back?
Touchscreen laptops have been around for years. You can get them in all sizes and shapes. Just not from Apple. For years, the Cupertino giant has treated the idea of a touchscreen MacBook the way I treat a meeting that could have been an email: with open contempt. However, Wednesday looks like the day the company could finally change its mind.
The latest Apple invite puts the “Pro and Tell” showcase in Los Angeles at 10 a.m. PT (1 p.m. ET) on October 28, 2026. Instead of a regular live-streamed keynote, it is an invitation-only, hands-on event for a handful of press and creators (similar to what the company did for the MacBook Neo earlier this year).